The third week of April has found 2.4 million people globally contracting COVID-19, while more than 160,000 have tragically lost their lives due to the pandemic. More than half of the fatalities are witnessed in Europe with around 100,000 deceased whereas the US has exceeded a total of 40,000 casualties.

At the same time, China, once the epicenter of the outbreak, reported 16 new cases, the lowest confirmed coronavirus cases since March 17, more than half of them being imported from abroad. As of 18 April the total number of COVID-19 cases in China was 82,735 cases and 4,632 deaths. Meanwhile, Wuhan has reopened, people have resumed their daily lives and factories operate non-stop.

The world is to be reopening soon

Similarly, the EU has officially asked its member states to contemplate strategies to reopen slowly and tacitly. Among the champions, Denmark has been the first to open its schools in Europe, while Austria and Italy reopened some stores and Germany plans to do the same as of today. Moreover, France has announced a plan to be reopening from 11 May onwards.

Amidst Europe’s reopening signs, Donald Trump announced he will also reopen America as soon as the 1st of May, despite the death rate exceeding the 40,000 threshold out of whom 1,891 in the last 24 hours. Simultaneously, the US Governors attack the Trump administration’s manic attempt to alleviate losses in the US economy, saying that it is overly too soon to reopen America. The same goes for the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi who appears infuriated with Trump’s premature decision to reopen the country. On the other hand, Trump’s unjustifiable decision has caused a number of riots in various states organized by his ultranationalist partisans, who protest intensely against social distancing and demand an abrupt reopening right here right now, without any hint of consideration about the repercussions that would have to the spread of COVID-19.

Manically looking for scapegoats

While this pandemic is plaguing the world and sets the scene for another global financial crisis, instead of the world staying united through solidarity, Trump’s administration is currently manically looking for scapegoats. Trump’s gold digging campaign to be re-elected later in the year and remain in power for another term has lead to an unorthodox attempt to mobilize his ultras by switching the COVID-19 agenda of deaths and unemployment to China.

The man who recently dared to call this global pandemic a “Chinese virus” and he was heavily criticised for doing so, last weekend he continued this awful rhetoric by saying at the White House: “It could have been stopped in China before it started and it wasn’t, and the whole world is suffering because of it”…“Let’s see what happens with their investigation. But we’re doing investigations also,”…“If it was a mistake, a mistake is a mistake. But if they were knowingly responsible, yeah, then there should be consequences…” In addition to that, his double Mike Pence said yesterday in an effort to justify the bizarre US withdrawal from the WHO: “It is clear to us that not only was there a failure by the World Health Organization to communicate to America and the world what was happening in China, but also that China was not as forthcoming as they should have been.”

What does a sane citizen make out of the US propaganda against China at a point that the world bleeds from coronavirus? Not much more than a clear strategy to polarize the sizeable xenophobic and racist part of the US electorate trying to switch attention from the highest score of deaths worldwide, the unprecedented massive unemployment and misery for America’s plethora of citizens without social care.

However, instead of witch-hunting and conspiracy theories about the origins of the virus, the world could use more the power of the biggest economy in the world if it had shown solidarity to the rescue of the ones in need. The US should have had a protagonist role by joining forces with other countries through international fora like the WHO or G20 to effectively combat this global pandemic or create a global fund to alleviate the coronavirus pain suffered by the underprivileged of the world. No, instead, Trump’s administration finds a global crisis as the best time to escalate another global crisis through animosity against the second biggest economy in the world.

Apparently, in our strange times sanity goes away if a band of consultants advises that locating a scapegoat is the only way to increase the slim chances of being re-elected.